AI - Let's go....

George B. Thomas, Nico, and Chris walk through AI image generation tools and prompt engineering for practical work like blog images and YouTube thumbnails. They show how to use these tools in real time and talk about why staying current with AI matters for creators.
Hi, locals.
Good morning. Happy Friday. HubSpot Nation. LinkedIn friends, it is March 28, 2025. We are almost to April. It is time for another episode of let's Build AI Skills with Nico. Georgia, Chris, how you fellas doing today?
Well, I was doing good till you said almost April, and I was super happy. Was Friday. It was like. It's like, I'm on a high. And then Chris crashed. I'm doing good. I'm doing good.
I'm doing amazing.
Lot of.
Lot of great news this week, and things are moving in exactly the direction that we have been talking about. So. Super excited. Super excited.
Yep. We got a UI refresh in Claude. We got some ridiculous image generation and GPT. We got a replit update. We got Robots Dancing, man, We got it all. But I was really excited. And I know obviously, George dove in right away, like he does to the image generation. So we're gonna. We're gonna show that off. But I do want to talk about the conversation that's starting to happen on LinkedIn, like, related to that, and that is, you know, it's so good. And people like, you know, Jonas, the Mets, like, shared a. Shared an image as if he were speaking at inbound, and it was so freaking good.
Yeah.
That there were some comments about how unsettlingly good it was, and I was just like, why. Why is this unsettling? And how many will you have to see before it's no longer unsettling? And I. They said openly they could not answer that question, but that's kind of the world we're in. So I'm just curious what you guys are seeing out there and maybe, like, showing a little bit of behind the scenes. George.
Yeah.
Will. Will help one. Like, why it makes so much damn sense to start doing this. Oh, yeah. And to kind of, like, how you can get comfortable.
Yeah. So. So, I mean, here's. Here's the thing. Let me address the first conversation that you started to have. Like, people are doing the things that they're doing right now because it's novelty. I can put myself on stage at Inbound because maybe I've never been there, and it would be kind of cool. And I'm testing and I'm playing, but with great power comes great responsibility. And I believe in my heart that of course there are bad actors, but good humans will be good humans. And once they get past a novelty and once they get past a testing phase, they're going to be like, oh, that's cool. But let me just. Let me do something Else with this power that I have, that makes more sense for me and for my business. Like, I don't think that automatically that we're going to just. The increase in bad actors is up 56.2%. Because chat GPT now lets you put yourself on state. Like, everybody just take a beat, relax a little bit. Like, we're having fun right now, but we'll get back to work in a minute. Like, that's. That's how I feel is happening. And of course, like, everybody's gonna jump on the bandwagon. But. But let me do this. Let me. Let me share my screen because, like, I think there are some very interesting things that we can start to think about and we can start to do. So when I. When I went into this, I wanted to kind of see what I could do. And so right now you should be seeing, like, a Facebook post. And I created this guy. I don't know who he is. He. He looks rugged. He looks human. He looks like he's climbing a mountain. And this is what I asked why. I literally said, can you create a highly detailed image prompt for a wide image that is a guy climbing a mountain wearing a blue parka? Like, this is. This is the creative direction that I get. I didn't say anything about goggles. I didn't say anything about snow on the beard. Me personally, the first thing I did, it was super simple. Now what I want to show is kind of a little bit behind the scenes of, like, super simple to get complex. And so this was another one. Now, interestingly enough, like, this is some sort of video game. His steering wheel isn't attached. That's probably why he's on fire. Because dude is wrecking. Like, I'm just gonna, like, so there's some things that you could tweak. Like this. He's intense. My man is trying to win the race. But, like, you can see the facial expression, and he's got the right amount of fingers. I'm just gonna throw that and his steering wheels attached. So, like, I'm sitting here playing with this stuff, and I'm trying to see, like, how good I can get it. And for my use case, I'm thinking, like, featured images for blog articles and things like that. I'm not necessarily trying to make this George in a blue parka climbing a mountain so I can go on social and be like, george, yesterday I climbed Mount Everest. Like, I'm not. I'm not trying to do that, right? And so I want to show, like, how simple of what I do. Is so I can get to where I can get to something like this. Because here's the thing, I put this out there and if you go to the Facebook post, somebody, my friend, Bella Vesta, she said, yeah, I tried, it didn't work for me. And she posted her image and it wasn't, it wasn't the greatest of images. So I was like, oh, maybe the magic isn't just the fact that you can generate these images. Maybe the magic is in how you could get to the point where you could generate these images like this. And so I'm just, I'm randomly gonna ask you guys, pick a topic. Just give me a topic.
See, that's not Strawberries in Summertime.
That's why I did that. That's the hardest part.
Like, no, I had, I was waiting for Chris.
The human has to come up with the, the idea, right? So here's the thing you said, okay, so what I'm gonna do, I want you to create a photo realistic. And I know I'm fat fingering this. So everybody who's judging me for typing, no, we'll get there, we'll get there. So I want to create a photorealistic image prompt. Okay? Now here's what I'm gonna do. Here's what I'm gonna do. I want it to be highly detailed. I want it to be a close up of a basket of strawberries, right? I want the background to be the rest of the field. Field and let's say a tractor. Okay? So I'm giving it some elements and then I'll be like, do your best use pro camera lens and lighting details. Give me the prompt, please, because I'm always kind. Now come back in here and I'll just do my little like, thanks Grammarly for being the best prompt. Engineer, helper. Boom. And so then this is what I do now I'm going to get a prompt, right? A close up shot of a. This is because I'm lazy. I don't want to type all this. I might not even know all of this. I knew all of the things that I said. But this gets Ninja, Canon EOS R5 or Nikon Z9 lens, 85 millimeter F14. That's the blurriness, by the way. I do know that much because I do do video stuff. Natural golden hour. This is a design term. This is like a photography term. Okay? So now what I'm just going to do is I'm going to grab this and I'm going to be like, please create this image. Now we're going to be sitting here for a hot minute, but I will be the. The guy. I will, I will. I will die on this hill that I'm about to say. I would much rather wait a few extra seconds, if not minutes for something that comes out being amazing than get mad that it's going to take a little bit for this image to generate. So we'll let this image generate because it's. It's doing its thing and we gave it a hefty prompt. Okay, we're going to be looking for the tractor. We're going to be looking for the close up of the basket of strawberries. And then the crazy thing is what I want to do next is I want to talk about what really makes this magical is once we get the image, we're going to ask it to make it into a meme. And I'm not going to give it any direction. I'm just going to be like, hey, be creative and turn this into a meme that I can share on social. That's the only line that I'm going to put after this. And then, and then I'm going to let it regenerate. But first we're going to let this generate. I'm going to pop it up full width. I'm already hungry for some strawberries in my dang cereal. I haven't eaten breakfast yet. I'm like, those look tasty. That tractor is dope as hell. It has all the wheels and the windows that it needs. It's got the blurry background. Like, I'm ready to use this right now on something. Right? Hey, Sam, come use this for a next release of something that has to deal with strawberries. Maybe, I don't know. Because this would be a great. Okay, so I'm going to. I'm a pop this open. Do you see the detail in the seeds and the glistening of the. The water or dew and the lines of the actual strawberry. Anyway, so. So this is, this is dope. Now I'm just going to be like, please make this a creative meme for the Internet. Do your best and be funny. I'm just going to say that I want it to be funny. Okay? That's not how you spell funny. I don't care. Grammarly is the best prompt, engineer, fixer ever. Boom. Now we're just gonna let it go. Okay, I'm gonna be quiet. You guys can talk about a. The. The. Your thoughts on the process, the prompt, and the outcome. What. What say you?
I mean, I think it's honestly like that's the same way that, that I usually tell people to go about it. Right. When it comes to prompting is that like the model, the model knows what it prefers. Just like a person knows what they prefer in terms of how they prefer to get direction. So it just makes perfect sense to start there and then start going outward. Because especially like, like George was saying, he puts a, he puts a little bit in, gets a lot out, and then from the amount that he's getting out now all of a sudden you get these like key terms that you didn't even think of before. So now you have these things that you're going to go explore. Right. Like I haven't even told George what Noling is yet, but as soon as he does something like, I don't know, CRM from a NOLing photographic view, he's gonna go nuts. And he's going to be doing that for like three weeks.
I can't, I can't wait to hear this. I can't wait. Right, so you're going to images talking about me. Strong, juicy and undeniably attractive. Maybe, Maybe it's a strawberry. We'll see.
I really, I want to see what the bottom part's gonna be.
I know, right? I'm like, I hope this is, I hope this kid friendly. Well, we'll see. I'm getting nervous.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know that that hasn't happened yet. He hasn't opened the barriers up on that end yet. So it should be, should be safe for work. But that is one of the things. When you said that the images take a minute. They do, but they, they've already started asking people and polling people. Now this is a feature that's only available for paid right now because it is. One of the reasons it takes so long is it is really burning up the, the bandwidth, basically.
Oh my God, I love it here. Nico, I want you to keep going, but I also want to show like a real world, like use case. So one of the things that I do in the morning, and this is, I'm not saying anybody needs to do this, but one of the things I do in the morning is I actually do morning devotions. So I put in like my morning devotion from my Bible app and then I ask it to teach me in a simple way. I teach it to ask me in a complex way and then I get it to write a blog article that I can then tweak and share like on this special place that I have on the George B. Thomas website. But look at this Like I asked it to create a featured image based off of the topic of my devotion. Do you see the glistening of the water? Do you see the rocks? Do you see the like dry ground and like, but, but because the tree is rooted. Anyway, I'm not going to start preaching. I'm just saying like there are real world use cases that this creativity can like unlock something that you, that you're either doing and it could be better or that you never thought you could do and now can. Okay, I'll shut up. Nico, go ahead.
No, it is, right, like we've been talking about this, you know, the three of us have been talking about this for months. That it is, it really is the case that, you know, now you have this capability of unleashing that creativity in your head out into the real world. You know, bringing all those thoughts and ideas out into the real world. So where, where you, where you all might be met with this idea of like, oh, things are taking over, taking over, taking over. It's not because we derive everything that we do. Action breeds reaction, light breeds, you know, from dark breeds life, you know, from. Stop. You go, there is this balance that exists and now we have this, this flurry. I mean like it's, it's, it's, it's really, it's going to be an explosion over the next three to six months of artists, programmers, musicians, like practically every area that you can think of. Why? Because now we have that knowledge and now we have that capability. Now we have these tools, right? And I think it's amazing, you know, you were saying that, that it does take a while and they, they asked people don't care.
No, I don't care.
So you, I mean it's exactly to your point because it's like the, the quality is so good and the, the output is so close to what, what it is that you're after. And like you said, when it comes to making the multiple images, you're, you're just telling a story and you're just talking through it. You know, I was doing this playful thing for, for HubSpot and came up with a little character because I was trying to do, I was just trying, you know, I'm like yourself just messing around with it and, and playing around to see like, okay, what, what could I do? And I wanted to not, you know, come start doing like something like CRM image related. And so if, you know, here's another one that you can mess around with. George exploded View. It didn't get it quite right. I wanted to try to do an exploded view of the actual application. But, you know, as soon as it did that, I was like, oh, you know what, Sprocket? Like, oh, we should. You know, I love, like, the style. I love in particular, but I was like, yeah, I should do that and come up with, you know, something like falloutish, but featuring HubSpot.
Yeah.
So now we have Captain Sprocket.
That's bad ass right there, dude. Like the. Like.
Oh, now I just gotta mention Michelle's comment here. Please tell me that three of you are optioning to do a talk at inbound on AI or available. I'll say that if anybody wants to get that petition together to see us talk.
Hey, Courtney. Hey, Adrian. I'll send you this video. If you want to come up with a special event where the three of us are on stage in the main area and we talk about AI Just let me know we're. We're down for it.
Yeah. Thank you, Michelle.
Oh, dude, this. Oh, Only you can help to prevent CRM fires. Oh, this is dope. Okay, so that's the thing, right?
It's like, as I'm doing it, it's like, okay, can you have Captain Sprocket looking as though he's flying over buildings that look like a bar chart and with a smile on his face, because previously he had this. I told it to give him a look of determination, and then it's like, okay, add some people that are saying, like, look, Captain Sprocket, right? And it's like, it's. Again, it's effortless. Like, here's the image. And then do this, right.
I hope people understand, because if you haven't tried to do consistent characters before, and the way that this is staying, like, so consistent, like.
Bro, that was the part that was, like, the part we were all kind of waiting for, right? Is this consistency? Like, that's crazy. Like, that's such a leap forward from where it was. Because that was the most frustrating part. It's like, oh, it was so good.
But small part.
Well, small part is wrong. Like the extra finger or whatever.
So that's the thing is, like, where.
Nico says, I did something special to make it happen. No, no, no.
Like, I'm watching this thing happen real time, and it's. It's happening so very quickly, and it sucks because I. I told my wife, like, a couple years ago, I was like, man, you know, everybody's about to get nerfed real hard, and they. They don't even see it coming. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm like, you don't. You don't know what that term means. But in the world of video games, when you get nerfed, it's a term that's used to mean that you get hit with a nerf bat, right? Which basically, it's like saying that you were doing something, but then a little bit got taken off the top.
Right?
So how that works is that, you know, maybe you're playing a certain character, a patch comes out, all of a sudden, that character is now weaker than it was before, but you've invested, you know, whatever 20, 30 hours into that character. So now you are inadvertently pulled back, even though you didn't want to be, but you were forced to move back. Right. Meanwhile, other people. Or it could be that, you know, things. Something that took you a long time to do before. Usually this is the case. Something that took forever to do before. Now you go talk to a character and they just give it to you. So, you know, players get obscenely upset because of the fact that, you know, oh, we've invested so much time to learn how to do this thing, and now someone just walks in and does it, or pays a little bit of money and they do it. And so that's the evolution. That's what evolution looks like.
Yeah. Here's what's.
That's not really nerfing, Right? So like a couple months ago or like six months ago, you could do what you guys are talking about. Well, I should say, like three months ago, you could do what you guys are talking about, but you could do it with Mid Journey, which was a much more complicated image program where you would have to understand how CD works, you'd have to set up your own styles, that kind of stuff, but with a little bit of time, actually, you could do it months ago with Leonardo. It was one of the first image apps where you could create your own style and apply it to images. But again, took a lot of knowledge from an image standpoint, from a generative standpoint. It's not like what we're doing now. So here we are months later, all those people that spent all that time building out that app to do that super specific thing, gone nerfed.
Bye. See ya. Hey, by the way, you created the dopest YouTube thumbnail without even knowing you were creating the dopest YouTube thumbnail.
Yeah, right.
Because I got an email while we're on here and check out what actually came into my inbox of, like, being alive. And then it's HubSpot CRM Captain's Sprocket is actually the what got presented to everybody. So nice. That's like, I want that. By the way, I challenge you. I challenge you to train GPT on what a dope YouTube thumbnail is and then ask it to generate two highly clickable versions of a YouTube thumbnail for XYZ topic and then layer your little PNG photo of yourself on top of it and see what happens to your creative process. Anyway.
All right, all right, my turn to have some fun. Ready for the realest of real use cases that should. Everybody should just stop doing what they've been doing before and switch, like just wholesale.
Is this like, Chris, what's happening? What's gonna happen?
This is just repurposing on. Repurposing on. Repurposing, Right. Like building the foundation. If you're doing all this one off stuff, like, just stop first of all. And just imagine like we're doing website redesigns or website updates and like, oh, we need some stock images.
Yep.
And we're gonna. We go and we find one. We're like, it would be cool if it was doing this though. And we look through like a thousand more to try and find that other. Other version two don't get there. And so we got some projects set up in Claude on the left. And by the way, Claude has web web search access now.
Finally.
So I'm like, hey, have you seen the sick update? I like, using my words just to see how he's going to react. Doesn't get the message that he probably needs to search for this. That confirms. I'm like, yes, it's the first time I've seen search in action on Claude. Really cool. And then does all the research. It's like, okay, now we're on the level now. Like, awesome. We're in the process of updating the Profoundly website and need some generalized photos, like stock images that depict HubSpot experts and users often at a desk with laptop computer and images like that. Can you give me some image prompts for GPT to create some great photorealistic images? Or the Profoundly website gives me nine. I take the first one, I open up GPT, I copy the prompt in and bam.
Boo.
My stock photo. Right. And now like showing. Seeing what you did, Nico, Like, I could keep it consistent like with this dude if I wanted.
Do it. Do a prompt right here. Be like, make this guy drinking coffee. Oh, don't.
Maybe later. Okay.
Oh, that's the app. Got it.
Yeah. Make this guy drink. I know. I don't know if it'll work, but.
It would be with him drinking coffee.
See, and this is like outside of. So, like, this is type editing, right, where you're just going like from the generated image to another request and then to another generated image. But there's also the aspect of, like, you can click into the image and then you can actually select parts of the image and just do the, the aspect of that. So, like, you know, especially with the Captain Sprocket stuff, you know, some of the text didn't come out right or whatever. Fine, just open the image, select that area of text, and then just type in what the text should have been. And it puts it perfectly in there.
And by the way, it hits the text, I'm gonna say 95. 96. Yeah, it's spot on at this point, which is great.
Yeah, 95 for sure.
Yeah.
You'd have to, you have to give it something pretty complicated or like give it a complex direction with the text that, that it might misinterpret.
I challenge you today to create an image with super Califragilistic xpious today and see if the text works. If it does, tag me in socials. Put the image up there. I want to see it.
Oh, man, I might use my, my HubSpot spoof of that song. Now that you're bringing that, bring it up. Also, Michelle, with all the great ideas today, I think graphic novel is in the making as well.
I buy it. I'd buy it yesterday.
Yeah, yeah, I'll, I'll start working on it.
So welcome to the future, everybody. Like, I don't know what else you need to see at this point. And again, this is the worst it's ever going to be.
Listen, this is why we started waking up with AI over like, years ago. Like, years ago. I know we don't call it that anymore and, but we've been doing it, like the three of us on this screen, we've been waking up, we've been getting nerdy. There's a slack channel that goes from here to the fricking Moon of Information at this point, maybe even circling on its way back at this point, ladies and gentlemen, you got to wake up, you got to start playing with stuff. You got to start figuring out real use cases. I'm so nervous that there are so many marketers, so many business owners that are going to just get left in the dust at this point. And I don't want that for your life. I, I, from the bottom of my heart, I don't want that for your Life.
Yeah. I wonder. We should do some deep research with tpt. I wonder if there's stats for, like, how many people got left behind when the Internet, like, happened. Right? I think it'll be more than that, whatever that was. But yeah, there's no, like, give it to the end of the year. Like, that's. That's how much time you have, in my opinion, to do this on your own accord, at your own pace, and then there's going to be forces from every which away working on you to either change immediately or, like, you know, no longer. No longer have a viable business because you can't keep up with costs and the speed of change and all that stuff we always talk about. And this is how you learn. Like, this is how we're not behind the scenes. Like, taking all week to craft this script to show you images and literally, like, learn George. All right, let's ask another question. Let's see. See if, like, it's not like we're. And it's not like we're gonna be like, oh, man, like, super disappointed if it doesn't get this right on the first try. We're just experimenting.
Like, you see, you just unlocked something that I take for granted. But I feel like I need to say, I live in this world where I am willing to ask the question, is it possible? Is it possible if I ask this thing to do this thing that it might not have even been built to do, Is it possible? Test, test, test, challenge, test.
Yeah, try again. Try one more time. Like, if this doesn't finish, I'm gonna be like, oh, that's my bad. You told me to update, like, halfway through, and I said, maybe later. So obviously I need to go update.
Chris, click, Crick. Click the image. Because it says image created. Just click on it to expand it. I bet it's just at the preview because of the, like, either that or refresh.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, it might be because of the update.
I'm in the app, so.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I was going to say, I. I don't know. I don't know why, but I so very rarely use the album.
Yeah, I don't really use the app that much either. I don't know why either, but I just go online.
Yeah.
Go from one to the other. Maybe go like off one on one. Like, there you go.
Hyper realistic image request. Oh, that's me. That's me trying to. To get George B. Thomas. It kept on trying to make you, like 10 or 20 years older, man. I don't know.
Yeah, yeah. Screw you chpt. I don't look that old. All right.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Absolute. Man. The. The MCP news is it's finally starting to blow up. People are finally starting to see what that's all about. I'm still waiting for people to properly call it the Master Control Program.
The Master Control Program. That's.
That's what it is, right?
Yep. There we go. Said to close and reopen. And there you go.
Boom.
Come on, folks. I mean, one line.
Make him drink coffee and actually go.
Back to the previous one.
His screens are the same, it looks like.
Not only that, but I think it is the same cup. Yep.
Oh, my God. I didn't even notice the cup when I said make him drinking coffee the first time. I didn't even realize that image. I think it's the same plant on the shelf, like the window seal. I think it's the same plan back there. Yeah, it is a little bit different.
And we got a little bit different with the HubSpot here, which.
Yeah. But still, probably.
Yeah. I. I could have wished for anything else to be changed besides that.
Right.
And maybe not make this look like Hubspat.










